Day 16 - Day of return. Its a leisurely start to the day and the first time in over 2 weeks we've slept past 8am. ( still only 4.5 hours sleep due to the 3.30 am finish the previous night). Breakfast is a simple affair but the coffee could take the paint off of a battleship. We elect to order a taxi for midday and head off in search of something interesting to do. The place is packed with tourists (mostly American it seems) and its raining slightly. The North A...

Day 15 - L'Aquila, Italy to Florence, Italy Its the last day of riding for Slash and Viper today and we have to get the bikes back to the depot in Prato by 16:00. There's just 278 miles between us and our goal and its autostrada most of the way. Its starts off a little chilly but soon warms up to the low 20's. We get some good miles done early on and the Satnav is telling us we should get to our destination with a couple of hours to spare. With this in mind we ...

Day 14 - Brindisi, Italy to L'Aquila, Italy. Its gonna be a small entry today purely down to the fact that its been a bit of a target driven day centred around trying to put in about 350 miles after quite a late start due to the ferry arrival time being late. The ferry crossing was nice and calm and we all got quite a good sleep even though we knew our cabin was surrounded by some of the meanest and angriest looking eastern European lorry drivers you are ever l...

Day 1 - Prato, Italy to Ancona, Italy After a night of broken sleep due to growing anticipation and tiny beds the first morning was upon us. A hearty breakfast was consumed by all and then we're off to the depot to be reunited with our babies. A very spatially aware taxi driver managed to get all our gear and us into the taxi with no expletives or throwing arms in the air. We're taken into a massive warehouse filled with bales of Hessian cloth and rolls of poly...

Day of departure What a foul day! Left Curry Rivel at 10:20 en route to Gatwick via Ramsbury, Charvil and the Chipstead. Didn't stop raining the whole way and was torrential at times - good job we were in the Hilux and not on a bike just yet! The forecast for the first day of riding is clear skies and a temperature of 26 degrees. Fingers crossed the forecaster concentrated on their 'how to predict the weather' course. Considering the task of getting 4 blokes a...